


And the world was gone

by shisabella



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:47:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27029851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shisabella/pseuds/shisabella
Summary: "Misty thought little could still shake her at this point, after she’s seen both people and pokémon with their insides festooned across the asphalt, after she walked into her home and found it bloodstained and empty. Yet the world is swept from under her feet like a rug.It’s a bite mark."Ash, Misty and Brock face the zombie apocalypse.
Relationships: Kasumi | Misty/Satoshi | Ash Ketchum
Kudos: 10





	And the world was gone

**Author's Note:**

> I'm moving my old works from fanfiction.net and tumblr to this account. This story was originally written in 2018.
> 
> Original notes:
> 
> I had a rather dramatic dream about Ash, Misty and Brock in the zombie apocalypse, then cried about it on a train, and somehow it turned into this. I haven’t written anything in months. I don’t know what happened.
> 
> Warning for death and some gore. And zombies, though they’re offscreen. “And The World Was Gone” is a song by Snow Ghosts. Also I’m sorry.

“Are you okay?!”

A hesitation—maybe she imagined it, or the faint light inside the abandoned mall deceived her eyes. He nods. “Yeah,” he says, and then his glance follows hers to the dark red splashes on the side of his jacket. “…Oh, that. It's—nothing.”

“What do you mean _nothing_ , are you hurt?”

“It’s not my blood.” He steps back hastily when she tries to take a closer look. “There was one in the back. But we—got rid of it, right, Pikachu?”

Affirmative sparkles light up around the pokémon’s cheeks. Well, okay, she must have imagined that, then—she wouldn’t put it past Ash to insist that he’s fine while he’s bleeding to death, but Pikachu wouldn’t lie to her, especially not about his trainer being hurt. She relaxes. “Found anything?”

He shuffles the backpack on his shoulder. “Uhh, not much. Some canned food. Some first aid stuff, bandaids, that kinda stuff. There wasn’t much left.”

“I found some food too,” she tells him. “And this.”

She shows him the gun. She doesn’t say _where_ she found it—she doesn’t say she pried it from a dead woman’s fingers, except those fingers were moving and the woman’s jaw was too, her teeth clicking together, and the only reason the rest of her wasn’t also moving was that there was barely a rest of her. Ash frowns.

“Do you even know how to use that?”

She shrugs and aims it at the wall with a slight grin. “Can’t be that hard, right?”

“Wait, don't—”

“I’m not going to, relax. I’m not that eager to let every zombie in a mile radius know exactly where we are.”

She lowers her arm without pulling the trigger and nods her head to the exit. “Come on, let’s get going. I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”

He follows. Outside stretches the once-Viridian City, now a sweep of deserted streets and broken windows, quiet only in appearance. Cities are dangerous, as any place where high concentrations of people lived and died: you never know how many of them are still there, and if the next corner or the next door will be the only thing to separate you from your death. Best not to stop for long. Best to keep your guards up and your feet moving, and Misty does just that, her hand white-knuckled around the handle of the gun despite that Ash is right—she doesn’t know how to use it. Yet still the cold metal pressed against her palm gives her a sense of security, illusory as it may be.

“Food, first aid stuff, a weapon,” she recites over the echoing sound of their footsteps. “We should be good for a while, right?”

Another hesitation. Did she imagine it this time, too? She turns: Ash kicks a loose pebble on the asphalt, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. But he quickly looks up noticing the pause and nods again, hurrying to smile.

“Yeah. A while.”

A gust of wind rises, carrying scraps of plastic and the distant, faint smell of death. Misty hastens her steps. A moment later he does the same, lagging briefly to turn his face to the orangeing sky.

They leave the dead city behind.

***

“ _There has to be something we can do,” she heard him say at night, his voice low, maybe to try and not wake up Brock who was already sleeping on the other side of her. She was starting to fall asleep too, and she wasn’t too sure if he was talking to her or to himself, but she turned, tucking one arm behind her head as a pillow as she lay on her back._

“ _To do what?”_

_They’d found the cabin that morning. There was freshly cut wood outside and it looked like someone might be living in it, but when Ash opened the door the stench of rot slammed against their faces and the only person who was still breathing, a little boy huddled out of reach under a table, was burning with fever and had a bite mark on his arm. They sat with him till the end, which came quickly. Then they dug two graves outside, for him and for the one who maybe had been his mother, without names because the boy was too sick to speak. Afterwards it felt wrong to stay, but they needed a place to sleep, especially with Brock’s injury looking as bad as it did._

_Ash remained silent for a couple moments. “To change things,” he said in the end. “This. To—fix all of this.”_

_Misty felt like letting out a bitter laugh, or crying. Or both. “I think even Ash Ketchum can’t singlehandedly save the world this time.”_

“ _I’m not talking about_ saving the world _, just— I dunno, just—” He stopped. “I dunno,” he only repeated in the end._

_For a bit she said nothing else either, watching the wooden beams of the roof disappear into the black of the night. Her shoulders and neck hurt from the digging, a dull, insistent pain deep in her bones. “We can do what we did today. Try to help the people we meet.”_

“ _Did we help really? That kid died anyway.”_

“ _But at least he wasn’t alone. I wouldn’t want to be, if I was dying, I think.”_

_Ash’s hand bumped against hers in the dark. It remained there for a while, like he didn’t notice; then his fingers curled slightly around hers—or maybe it was hers around his, she was not sure. They lay that way, quiet, neither of them acknowledging it out loud, neither of them alone. She fell asleep still holding his hand._

***

It’s almost dark when they get back to the cabin. The sun has disappeared beyond the horizon entirely, only a rust-colored halo left to outline the mountains. It would be beautiful, if only she could forget about everything else.

“I was getting worried,” Brock tells them as they walk in. He’s pale and still limping a little: his wounded leg hasn’t been healing quite right, but at least the worst looks over now, and it could have been way worse—it could have been a bite. Misty shrugs her backpack off and leaves it on the table.

“Sorry. But we’re gonna have enough to eat for a bit now, right, Ash?”

Ash doesn’t answer. When Misty turns he’s still standing by the door, his shoulders strangely stiff, the brim of his hat casting a shadow over his eyes. Pikachu looks up at him, worried: “Chu~?”

“Ash?” she repeats. “Are you okay?”

He still says nothing. He walks towards the bed slowly, almost mechanically; takes off his backpack and drops it on the mattress. The cans of preserve go _thunk_ against each other. He takes a deep breath and it seems to hitch in his chest, quivering a little before he lets it go.

“…Ash?”

He removes his jacket. He’s standing with his back turned on them, but Misty still sees that it’s not just blood splashes like she thought—the inside is all red on the left, and so is his shirt, all the way down to his hip. Her stomach crumples into a cold pit.

He takes the time to carefully fold the jacket, like he’s trying as hard as he can to postpone—what? Lays it on the mattress next to the backpack.

He turns at last. Without looking at them he lifts the hem of his shirt.

Misty thought little could still shake her at this point, after she’s seen both people and pokémon with their insides festooned across the asphalt, after she walked into her home and found it bloodstained and empty. Yet the world is swept from under her feet like a rug.

It’s a bite mark.

The taste of bile fills her throat. Ash lets the shirt go and silence closes on them like a thick curtain.

“How—” Brock’s voice is hoarse, coming from far away. “How did that happen?”

Ash shuffles his weight from one foot to the other and shrugs. “There was a zombie at the mall. It came out of nowhere, it was on me before I even noticed. We got rid of it, but it bit me first.” Pause. And he said it wasn’t his blood, the liar! He said he was okay! “Even Pikachu didn’t notice anything.”

Pikachu looks at him in mortified horror, his ears flat on his head. Misty feels her lips numb. She parts them and no sound comes out. Ash’s hands close into fists, shaking slightly at his sides.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she hears her voice ask. He lifts his head to look at her and she sees that his eyes are wet.

“What would have changed if I had? I just—” He purses his lips. “I don’t even know. I just wanted to be okay a little longer, I guess.”

Misty wants to scream at him. She wants to be furious; to walk up to him and shove him against the wall, yelling _how could you, how dare you make me think everything was okay._ She wants to hold him with everything she’s got.

She doesn’t do any of it. She stares at the blood on his shirt. She shakes her head: tries desperately to reject that image, to cling to something that’s not even _hope,_ not really, because she knows, she _knows_ there is none. “Maybe—”

Maybe what? There’s nothing they can do. It’s not an arm or a leg, that you can amputate and pray the infection hasn’t spread beyond it yet and you don’t bleed to death, and even if it were by now it would be far too late. Maybe it’s not infected? As if that were even possible. He was dead the moment his skin split and she knows it, she knows perfectly well. They all know.

There’s nothing they can do.

“How are you feeling?” Brock asks in a whisper. Ash shrugs one more time.

“I’m still fine. Kinda hurts, but that’s it.”

In the helpless silence that follows Misty watches his hands tremble and thinks of those same hands closing around her fingers in the dark. Of those same hands, gone. Of all of him gone. The floor sways like the deck of a boat.

Ash looks up at her again, suddenly. “Give me the gun.”

She blinks. “What?”

“The gun you found.” His voice shakes too, though he’s clearly trying to keep it firm. “There’s no point waiting anyway.”

She understand what he means at once and her breath catches in her chest. “No.”

“Just—give me the gun.”

“No!” Her eyes burn. She balls her fists: “Are you serious? Are you really asking us to stand here and watch you blow your brains out?!”

“Why, what’s the alternative, stand there and watch while I die slowly?!”

He growls it almost, fighting to keep his words from breaking, and it hits her: he’s terrified. Of course he is. They’ve seen others go. They’ve seen how it happens, the fever baking the brain into delirium, the agony. The eyes snapping open again but with no life in them anymore. Ash lowers his again, drawing a sharp intake of breath that’s almost a sob.

But—

_but_

_I’m not ready_

She wants those last few hours he’s left, she _wants_ them, wants them desperately. _I’m not ready._ She wants to say that. Instead what she hears herself say is: “It’s in my backpack.”

“Misty—” Brock tries. She doesn’t let him finish.

“It’s in my backpack, so take it for yourself if that’s what you want, you stupid—”

She can’t go on. She presses a hand to her mouth and sobs against it, and Ash marches past her without a word. He grabs the backpack and turns it upside down, spilling its contents across the table. When she dares to look he’s holding the gun.

“Ash—please,” Brock tries to persuade him. “There’s still some time.”

“Yeah, what. A day if I’m lucky.” He doesn’t look at any of them. He looks at the weapon, weighing it in his hands. He hands it to Brock. “Do you know if it’s loaded?”

Brock’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down. He takes it, though, and fiddles carefully with it until he figures out how to eject the magazine. He stares at it with a grimace before pushing it back in. “It is,” he says. But he keeps it when Ash extends his hand. “Just think about it for a moment, Ash. Please.”

“I have.”

Brock closes his eyes for a long second. He hands the gun back to him.

Pikachu tries to follow Ash to the door. He calls his name and Ash freezes, almost turning his head like he’s trying to gather the courage to look back, to say something. From where she’s standing Misty can see his chin quiver.

He decides that it’s too painful. Opens the door and slams it shut behind himself.

A sound comes out of her, almost a wail. A moment later Brock’s arms are around her, holding tight: holding onto. She presses her fists over her ears and shuts her eyes and waits. Waits for the world to end.

But there’s no bang. There’s nothing, only a long, long silence, and after a while she dares to breathe again and peek through her tears at the closed door. She frees herself from Brock’s hug and takes a step, then another. His hand closes around her arm: “Wait.” She pulls it from his grasp.

Pikachu follows her.

Outside Ash is standing with his back to the cabin, his arms lowered by his sides, the gun weakly held in a shaky grip. A wave of relief washes over her.

“Ash.”

“Pikapi!”

He looks at them. His shoulders hiccup; there’s tears filling his eyes. “I can’t,” he says. “I tried— I couldn't—”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s _not—_ if I die— if I turn—”

“It’s okay.” She reaches him, gently places her hand over his. “You won’t turn.”

“I’ll hurt you. And Pikachu. And Brock—”

“You won’t turn,” she says again. She opens his fingers. She thinks of the woman at the mall, her teeth going click, click, click. “Here, give it to me. It’s okay.”

He resists only for a moment. She takes the gun from him and swallows, a terrible weight in her chest. She looks at him. “You won’t turn. I promise,” she tells him. “I’ll keep this. I’ll make sure you don’t hurt me, or Pikachu, or Brock, or anyone. I _promise_.”

Ash stares at her as the understanding of what she promised truly sinks in. “It’s okay,” she tries to assure him one more time, but it comes out all squeezed up and shaky now, and so she just closes in a step the distance between them and pulls him into a one-armed hug, the gun held safely away from him in her other hand. Ash sobs. Against her neck his forehead is warm, not quite burning yet but clearly feverish already.

She holds him tight. Until he manages to calm down a little, and step back wiping one arm over his eyes. He looks up, then, and somehow incredibly pulls his lips into a wavery smile. Laughs, even, a tiny hint of a weak choked-up sound, the most beautiful Misty’s ever heard.

“That was—kinda pathetic, wasn’t it.”

She tearfully returns the smile. “Kinda.”

He laughs again. Sniffles; wipes his eyes one more time. He looks at Pikachu and at her and his glance skitters to the ground.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” It’s really not, nor will it ever be again. But for a few hours she can still smother that knowledge in the back of her mind, still stick her fingers in her ears before the obvious. He’s still there. The world hasn’t ended, not yet.

She takes his hand, the sky above their heads now a deep purple: “Come on. Let’s get back inside.”

***

Most people don’t last 24 hours.

They spend some of that time talking, mostly about inconsequential things, because really, what do you talk about when you know one of you has a day to live? Brock heats up some dinner that none of them even touch. The conversation keeps dwindling into silence, and in that silence Misty keeps going over words she never said, stuck in her throat like fishbones. She could say them now, last chance. Final offer.

The gun is on a chair behind her. Close enough to reach when she will need to.

It wasn’t like this with the others they lost. Pallet Town, Cerulean, Pewter, they were all ghost towns long before they reached them, everyone they’d ever known already gone. She had still hoped, and still fell to her knees and wept when she walked into the empty gym, but there were no goodbyes to say nor final moments to dissect. There was no wondering what she might have done differently. Her sisters had been gone from the start.

“We shouldn’t have split up.”

They were talking about something silly a minute ago. Ash shrugs weakly. “It was my idea.”

“I should have told you it was a stupid idea.”

He considers, then shrugs again. “Maybe if we hadn’t it would have bitten both of us.”

There’s purple shadows under his eyes now. She counts: five, six hours. She tries to stop herself from counting how many are left. Pikachu curls up in Ash’s lap, his dark eyes glued on him.

“How are you feeling?” Brock asks. Ash’s hands tighten around the edges of the mattress.

“I’m fine.”

He repeats it obstinately despite that each time it sounds a little less true. By the time the night begins to thin into the gray-pink of dawn his face is flushed red, pale around the temples, his brow glistening with sweat. His grasp on the mattress is a death grip. “I’m fine,” he insists anyway, barely managing a hoarse husk of a voice.

Brock uncaps the water canteen and hands it to him. “Here, drink some.”

Ash’s hands shake, he has to hold the canteen with both. He brings it to his lips and hardly swallows a couple small sips before grimacing and handing it back to Brock.

“Come on, try to drink a little more.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

Misty counts. It’s probably been about twelve hours by now, maybe more. She rubs her fingers over her eyes, burning from the crying and the lack of sleep. “Maybe you should lie down a little,” she tells him, and she knows before the words have left her mouth that if he does it won’t just be _a little—_ he won’t ever get up again, not while alive. He must know it too, because he stubbornly shakes his head.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not. Come on, Ash, you’re just going to feel worse.”

“I said I’m fine.” His eyes dart to her, sunken and bloodshot. He grits his teeth; and as if to prove his point pushes Pikachu from his lap and straightens his knees to stand.

She springs to her feet in time to catch him before he collapses to the floor. Even so she can barely keep him upright: he slumps against her entirely, his legs unable to hold the weight of his body, violent shivers rattling his whole frame. He’s burning up, she can feel it even through the fabric of his shirt.

Brock stands too, his hands held out to help her, but there’s no need—he’s not that heavy. She sits back down carefully, keeping her arms around Ash while he breathes in uneven gasps, a pain in her chest like a black hole.

“…Maybe you’re right,” he manages to say, at last. She holds him tighter for a second.

“I know.”

She helps him lie down. Pikachu digs his teeth into the blanket to pull it over his body and then immediately curls in the space above his shoulder. Misty touches his forehead, burning, boiling, and he shudders under her palm.

“I saw some painkillers in the stuff you brought back,” says Brock, soft. “I can get you something if you’re in pain. Maybe it’ll help a little.”

Ash thinks about it, then shakes his head. “It’s alright. I don’t mind. It’ll be harder to fall asleep. I don’t wanna sleep.”

Neither of them finds words to respond. Misty feels tears swell and pushes back desperately, until Ash looks at her and then at Brock and rolls his eyes, puffing his cheeks some.

“Stop making those faces. I’m not going anywhere yet.”

She sobs-laughs. “Of course.”

She takes his hand. Maybe she still can’t get those words out of her throat, even now, but she can do that, at least. Ash’s fingers grasp back tightly. She tries not to think of when they’ll let go.

***

He doesn’t sleep, not yet, but his eyes go glassy and at times it looks like he’s not even there. Brock folds a scrap of fabric and wets it under the canteen to lay on his forehead and try to keep the fever down, and Ash shivers so hard the tendons in his neck pop out like ropes. The sky outside the window goes from pink to pale blue.

“Mist?”

He’s there now. She sniffles, stroking his knuckles with her thumb: “Yeah?”

His fingers squeeze hers. He struggles a bit to speak: his lips are chapped and dry. Maybe that’s not the only reason. “I’m glad—I broke your bike that day. I’m glad we met.”

Her throat tightens. “Don’t start saying things like that.”

“What, like I’m about to die?”

He tries to laugh but chokes on it and coughs. She reaches for the canteen and helps him drink, and strokes his hair while he tries to catch his breath. “Me too,” she tells him, with sudden urgency. “I’m glad we met too.” Even through the gasps the corners of his lips fold into the shadow of a smile.

The gun is still there. It’s almost as if she can feel its shape even without looking, haunting, a looming reminder.

“You too, Pikachu,” Ash whispers. “And Brock. I'm—really glad I met you guys.”

His eyes drift closed. Moments or minutes later he opens them again, frantic; his hand clasps hers so hard it hurts. “Don’t let me turn,” he pleads. “Please. Please don't—”

“I won’t let you turn,” she promises again. He doesn’t seem to hear her.

“Please. I’ll hurt you. Just kill me. Just—”

“You’re still with us, Ash,” Brock says. Pikachu nuzzles his face. He calms down at last, but keeps holding onto Misty’s hand like he’s hanging on the edge of a cliff. His eyes stare ahead without seeming to focus on anything. Then the dying lightbulb in his brain flickers back on, slowly, and he comes back.

He’s looking straight at her next. “Don’t hesitate,” he says, and he sounds lucid now, not delirious at all. “Shoot me as soon as I go.”

“I promised I will.”

“Promise me you won’t hesitate.”

Tears spill when she blinks. “Okay. I promise.”

He nods, relieved; then his grip loosens and his eyes slip closed again. Misty presses a sob into her palm.

“…You don’t have to, you know,” Brock whispers after a few moments. “I can—take care of it.”

But she shakes her head. “I promised, didn’t I?”

For the next few hours Ash drifts in and out of consciousness, at times coherent, at times pleading, then screaming, to kill him, shoot him now, please, before it’s too late. Sometimes their voices reach him. Sometimes not. The flesh around the bite is a dark purple when Brock lifts his shirt to check it, the jagged edges black. It smells so bad she has to cover her mouth to keep from gagging.

But around noon—almost twenty hours now, she hasn’t stopped counting—his hand gives hers a firm tug, and when she looks up she meets his eyes, dark and full of pain but without a doubt present. “What’s with those funeral faces,” he croaks, barely more than a breath. “I’m not dead yet.”

They talk a little more. Well, she and Brock do, mostly, Ash is too weak to do much more than nod and contribute a few whispered words. But for another small stretch of time he’s still lucid, still not gone, still there with them.

Then he isn’t.

***

Most people don’t last 24 hours, but he’s Ash, so of course he’s going to fight tooth and nail until the very end. By the time the sky begins to turn orange again his heart is still beating. Barely: under Misty’s fingertips his pulse is uneven, labored, but still refusing to stop.

He’s lying still now, after thrashing, after screaming, after calling their names desperately and gasping in pain for hours. She holds his hand between hers, his burning fingers pressed against her lips, and watches his chest rise and fall. Watches him, trying to embed every line of his face in her memory. Her eyes feel full of sand. His breath is the whiff of bellows, crackling and too fast.

“C'mon,” she whispers, and she doesn’t know what she’s trying to tell him—to hold on a little longer, or to let go, to stop fighting, he’s been strong until now but it’s enough, he doesn’t have to anymore.

She could tell him everything else too. He wouldn’t hear her, or even if he did he could never answer.

Brock’s hand brushes against the small of her back. “Do you want to rest a little bit?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t.”

_(I wouldn’t want to be,_ she told him, _if I was dying, I think.)_

“Just a few minutes. I promise I’ll be here, he won’t be alone.”

But, “I can’t,” she says again. Because if she leaves, even just for a few minutes, even just one to stretch her aching muscles, he might be gone when she comes back. So she can’t, even if she started struggling to keep her eyes open hours ago and a dull throbbing pain has nestled at the base of her spine. Brock strokes her back and says nothing.

They sit by his side in silence, all three of them. Outside the window the sky turns purple and then dark. Brock’s head lolls forward. She can’t blame him, really—he’s the one who’d need rest the most, with his still-recovering injury. Pikachu’s eyes glimmer in the lantern light, watching Ash intently with hers.

Ash’s fingers twitch. For a few moments she thinks she imagined it, or it was just a spasm, because his eyes are closed; but when she turns again she sees his blistered lips move, trying to form a word. Or a name.

_Mist._

“I’m here,” she hurries to say. “I’m right here.”

His eyelids flutter. From under his dark eyelashes his brown eyes look at her, only for a second. She has to lean closer to hear what he’s trying to say: “Mist,” again. And “don’t leave. I—”

It’s the last thing he says. Then he’s gone again, his heart beating still, but his hand limp in her grasp now. His chest rises, falls. Stops. Rises again.

She leans closer still. She kisses his boiling forehead, wetting his hair with her tears, and she says it at last. It’s only three words after all. She hopes he heard her. She hopes it with every last bit of herself.

When she straightens her back his chest isn’t moving anymore.

The whole world crumbles under her feet. But any moment now his eyes will snap back open and he won’t be Ash anymore, so there’s no time to succumb to despair, even if she only wants to sob until her body will be hollow. She made a promise. She has to keep it.

She thinks of the woman at the mall: click, click, click. She reaches for the gun.


End file.
